Hey /lit/, just purchased The History of the Peloponnesian War.

File: 51olpAOAAlL._SX392_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg (55KB, 394x499px) Image search: [Google]

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I'm doing the same thing literally right now.

One thing I will note is pic related, the Landmark Thucydides is incredibly helpful to overall comprehension of the book because it contains many maps, as well as some helpful footnotes and appendixes. The Richard Crawley translation is a bit dated though. I'm actually reading this AND another book with the Warner translation at the same time. I'll read the Warner translation when places aren't being referred to much, and flip back to the Crawley when suddenly many locations are being referred to, and I'll make notes on the maps. It is slowing down how fast I'm getting through the book but I feel is greatly improving comprehension. It's really not as obvious from reading, for example, how far flung the Athenian Empire really was relative to the Peloponnesians and how dominant they were at sea. As well as say the problems the Peloponnesians had with truly invading deep into Athenian territory in significant numbers without getting destroyed by a Helot revolt.

Anyways, my interest in the Peloponnesian war is less historical or for it's own sake, to me, it seemed like some reasonable background info for some of the Greek Plays and the philosophy. I'm not for example trying to memorise the dates of when things happened, or critically examine Thucydides as a historian.

Start on the first page and read chronologically